


The Illustrious Debut of Bug Boy

by AParticularlyLargeBear



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Trans Male Taylor Hebert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16370312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParticularlyLargeBear/pseuds/AParticularlyLargeBear
Summary: Taylor meets the Undersiders, Tattletale gets it right. A new cape is born.





	The Illustrious Debut of Bug Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not particularly fond of how this turned out but the 'what Lisa said' of Shredded has been niggling at me since I wrote that, so I went ahead and wrote this. Probably a combination of unfamiliarity with first person, retreading ground of a canon scene with not-many changes, and just the sense of having trod similar ground in stronger form previously. I'm kind of disappointed with myself because I really don't think I gave the little buzz of being correctly pronouned the justice it deserves.
> 
> Oh well, we write and we learn and sometimes you write not-great stuff to help you with the good stuff. Have a snip!

Faced with four capes I barely knew, plus their three monster pets, on a rooftop, after coming within an inch of being incinerated by a pissed-off gangster dragon, I felt like I maybe deserved some slack for not holding up my end of a conversation. Unfortunately, one of their number had other ideas.  
  
“Did Lung fuck her up or something?” The foppish boy, Regent, leaned forward, one hand on his hip. “Yo, Grue asked you a question.”  
  
I was almost too exhausted, bruised and frankly fucking terrified to give a shit about him ma’aming me.  
  
Almost. No amount of physical pain could ever match up to the sly little scraping that a ‘her’ or a ‘she’ wore against the inside of my guts.  
  
I opened my mouth, then the girl who’d been introduced as Tattletale spoke. “He’s just shy.”  
  
I shut it again with a snap I was sure was audible even through my mask. A stupid grin spread across my face and I could practically feel myself buoying up, standing taller. One word. One word made nearly getting toasted by Lung worth it. As a cape, I wasn’t Taylor Hebert.  
  
I was whoever I wanted to be.  
  
“That’s a dude?” Regent chuckled, killing my smile and sparking off an immediate desire to reach for whichever venomous insects I had left. “They have prettier hair than I do.”  
  
“Said he, didn’t I?” Tattletale gave me an appraising look.  
  
The combination of derision and easy acceptance made my stomach do a flipflop. Way too reminiscent of some of the bullshit from school, the trap where they’d backed off, even apologised, but then gone in for the kill. Begrudgingly, I had to admit that Regent had something of a point; even with my hair tied back, the style was still much longer than most boys would wear. I wanted to cut it, but between how dad would react and the ammunition it would give to Emma and company, I’d just be exchanging one discomfort for another.  
  
“He saved us a fight with Lung, he could have a pink mohawk for all I care,” said Grue.  
  
I was paying less attention to him, though, than the fact Tattletale had spent the last several seconds looking me slowly up and down. A familiar anxiety bubbled inside my chest. It was a conscious effort of will not to shrink under the staring, make myself small and inconspicuous. I was a cape, I reminded myself, not a frightened girl. Not  _any_  kind of girl.  
  
She looked up and grinned, showing teeth. “Ignore those two. You look like a badass, man.” She punctuated the delivery with a wink, which told me, in a bolt of instinctive terror, that she knew.  
  
But was… still calling me a man anyway. Backing me up to her teammate. The fear mingled with relief to create a bizarre cocktail, especially with the garnish of pride about the compliment to my appearance. Although I didn’t have the benefit of a powerhouse physique to fill out my costume, I’d made my best effort to bulk it up in the right spots, make it look more like spider  _armour_  than a spider suit. The resulting effect gave me something which resembled pauldrons on either shoulder, along with something of a chest plate—and thank fuck I didn’t have to worry much about space for what was underneath—covering most of my torso like a riot vest.  
  
Tattletale suddenly turned her head to one side, her smile fading. “We’re about to have company. You have a name, Bug Boy?”  
  
I mustered my confidence enough to speak. “I haven’t chosen one,” my attempt at lowering the pitch of my voice sounded ridiculously false to my ear. “Definitely not that.” I managed to squeak, even as anxiety’s grip clenched me around the throat.  
  
I waited one of them to call out the obvious bullshit. None of them did.  
  
“We leaving or not?” growled Bitch tersely. By way of answer, Grue moved over to one of her giant dogs and mounted up. The others followed suit.  
  
“Need a ride?” asked Grue.  
  
I looked between the four of them, Tattletale last of all. It took me longer than it should have done to shake my head. Bitch whistled, and her dogs leaped into action.  
  
Tattletale twisted around as her canine mount charged for the edge of the roof. “See you around, Bug Boy!”  
  
“I’m not Bug Boy!” I called after her, but the three dogs and their four riders had already vanished into the night.  
  
I would have liked to say that the small smile on my face and the giddy pounding of my heart were byproducts of taking on Lung my first night and near enough winning, but I’d made a promise to be honest to myself. My spirits were up from the encounter with the other teenagers.  
  
And really, even though Bug Boy was a shitty name, at least it was accurate.


End file.
